Deep Space Nine and the Roads Taken
My dad was a lifelong Star Trek fan. As a kid in the ’60s, I shared his fascination with space exploration — dreaming of spaceports, Mars missions, and the future beyond Earth. Every week, we’d gather around our black-and-white RCA TV to watch Captain Kirk’s adventures, much to my mother’s dismay.
Years later, my father remained devoted to the franchise, following each new series as they aired. I was less enthusiastic about The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, still preferring the vintage charm of the original Star Trek.
While caring for my dad — after serving as caregiver and advocate for my mother before she passed — we watched an episode of Deep Space Nine together in his apartment. I don’t recall the plot, and the series never quite hooked me, but something unexpected happened during the end credits: I recognized the director’s name.
It was Allan Kroeker, someone I had worked with decades earlier while training as a second camera assistant and clapper/loader on a short drama he directed in Fisher Branch, Manitoba, Canada. The year was 1980, and the film was Capital, starring Ed McNamara, and his second dramatic short after Tudor King.
That shoot was my first professional film set, and I remember it vividly. We filmed in February, battling sub-zero Canadian temperatures. Shooting on 16mm, we used matches to light portable hand warmers, which we strapped to the Arriflex camera motor with rubber bands to keep it from freezing. Battery belts died quickly, so I’d run to the camera van to swap warm ones and reload film magazines inside a cramped black bag.
A few years later Allan was instrumental and supportive of my film efforts to produce my first arts documentary, A Soft Look, which was broadcast on the CBC and won several awards in the US and Canada.
Allan went on to direct numerous Star Trek episodes, IMAX films, and movies-of-the-week. Seeing his name again, decades later, while sitting beside my dad, felt like a quiet, cosmic loop closing.
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